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 The Coastal Redwood Forest
The coastal redwood forest is indigenous to a very narrow strip of land along the Pacific coast of North America, from southern Oregon in the north to Big Sur in California’s Monterey County to the south. Today’s forest is a remnant of a truly ancient forest that included several other Sequoia species, ginkgo, bald cypress, sassafras, and hickory. More than 65 million years ago, in the Paleocene epoch, Sequoia affinis covered much of western North America, including present day Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon and Nevada. But when the North American climate swung toward cooler and drier conditions, Sequoia affinis and most other Sequoias went extinct. But Sequoia sempervirens, the coast redwood, hung on to make a world of its own. The coast redwood forest enjoyed its greatest abundance in the mid-Holocene epoch (5,500 years ago), stretching as far south as Santa Barbara. The coastal redwood forest has evolved as a result of some pretty extraordinary adaptations to California’s narrow “coastal zone.” Redwoods have the ability to sieve fog for enough moisture to thrive through long rainless summers. Their thick bark, high in tannin, protects the trees from wind-swept coastal fires and insects. Their wide-ranging roots can intertwine with other trees, and can even withstand being covered with more layers of soil after they’re mature. Most trees tend to smother under such conditions, but redwoods have figured out how to endure and enjoy the silt dropped by repeated flooding. Our redwood forests have a cathedral stillness that belies the vibrant and diverse life forms that thrive there. In fact, the redwood forest has fostered a unique habitat for a remarkable population of flora and fauna. It shelters birds like spotted owl, varied thrush with its melancholy whistle, and the oddball “foglark” the marbled murrelet, a seabird that nests on moss-upholstered limbs miles inland. Red tree voles, relatives of the mousy critters in fields, live almost entirely up in the redwood treetops, dining on those unpromising needles. Redwood forests also feature a vast, “hidden biodiversity” in the forest soil where fungi, microscopic invertebrates, and bacteria play crucial roles in nutrient cycling and ultimately in forest health. Redwoods mix with other big forest trees like Douglas fir and smaller species from madrone to rhododendron, and tan oak. Redwoods also provide a unique protective shelter for a delightful variety of understory plants: lush ferns, trilliums, huckleberry, salal, clintonia and calypso orchid. For further study, reference Plants of the Redwood Region which provides a complete and colorful treatment of the flora of the redwood forest. Many of the redwoods and other trees in today’s redwood forest
were established as seedlings and were sprouted from stumps after the
massive logging that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their
propagation has occurred under very different conditions than their
ancient relatives. As explained by Reed Noss in The
Redwood Forest,
the resulting forests differ in species composition from the virgin
forests encountered by the first European settlers. Noss concludes, “We
can surmise that redwood forests will continue to change in their species
composition and structure as the individual species that compose these
forests respond in their own ways to continued environmental change. The
prospect of rapid global warming and other abrupt anthropogenic changes
over the next century raise many questions about what the forests of
the future will look like. If they receive careful stewardship,
however, we have confidence that redwood forests of some kind or another
will endure.” |